Progress and challenges in the implementation of Electronic Medical Records in Saudi Arabia : a systematic review

Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems are being implemented increasingly worldwide. Saudi Arabia is one of the developing countries that commenced implementing such systems in 1988. Whilst EMR uptake has been low in Saudi Arabia until now, a number of hospitals have implemented EMR systems successfully. This paper analyses available studies (n = 28) in the literature regarding EMR implementation in Saudi Arabia to identify the progress of EMR implementation to date and to identify the facilitators and barriers to implementation.

Topic dependent language modelling for spoken term detection

This paper investigates the effect of topic dependent language models (TDLM) on phonetic spoken term detection (STD) using dynamic match lattice spotting (DMLS). Phonetic STD consists of two steps: indexing and search. The accuracy of indexing audio segments into phone sequences using phone recognition methods directly affects the accuracy of the final STD system. If the topic of a document in known, recognizing the spoken words and indexing them to an intermediate representation is an easier task and consequently, detecting a search word in it will be more accurate and robust. In this paper, we propose the use of TDLMs in the indexing stage to improve the accuracy of STD in situations where the topic of the audio document is known in advance. It is shown that using TDLMs instead of the traditional general language model (GLM) improves STD performance according to figure of merit (FOM) criteria.

Phonetic spoken term search using topic information

The aim of spoken term detection (STD) is to find all occurrences of a specified query term in a large audio database. This process is usually divided into two steps: indexing and search. In a previous study, it was shown that knowing the topic of an audio document would help to improve the accuracy of indexing step which results in a better performance for STD system. In this paper, we propose the use of topic information not only in the indexing step, but also in the search step. Results of our experiments show that topic information could also be used in search step to improve the STD accuracy.

Construction of volcanic records from marine sediment cores : a review and case study (Montserrat, West Indies)

Detailed knowledge of the past history of an active volcano is crucial for the prediction of the timing, frequency and style of future eruptions, and for the identification of potentially at-risk areas. Subaerial volcanic stratigraphies are often incomplete, due to a lack of exposure, or burial and erosion from subsequent eruptions. However, many volcanic eruptions produce widely-dispersed explosive products that are frequently deposited as tephra layers in the sea. Cores of marine sediment therefore have the potential to provide more complete volcanic stratigraphies, at least for explosive eruptions. Nevertheless, problems such as bioturbation and dispersal by currents affect the preservation and subsequent detection of marine tephra deposits. Consequently, cryptotephras, in which tephra grains are not sufficiently concentrated to form layers that are visible to the naked eye, may be the only record of many explosive eruptions. Additionally, thin, reworked deposits of volcanic clasts transported by floods and landslides, or during pyroclastic density currents may be incorrectly interpreted as tephra fallout layers, leading to the construction of inaccurate records of volcanism. This work uses samples from the volcanic island of Montserrat as a case study to test different techniques for generating volcanic eruption records from marine sediment cores, with a particular relevance to cores sampled in relatively proximal settings (i.e. tens of kilometres from the volcanic source) where volcaniclastic material may form a pervasive component of the sedimentary sequence. Visible volcaniclastic deposits identified by sedimentological logging were used to test the effectiveness of potential alternative volcaniclastic-deposit detection techniques, including point counting of grain types (component analysis), glass or mineral chemistry, colour spectrophotometry, grain size measurements, XRF core scanning, magnetic susceptibility and X-radiography. This study demonstrates that a set of time-efficient, non-destructive and high-spatial-resolution analyses (e.g. XRF core-scanning and magnetic susceptibility) can be used effectively to detect potential cryptotephra horizons in marine sediment cores. Once these horizons have been sampled, microscope image analysis of volcaniclastic grains can be used successfully to discriminate between tephra fallout deposits and other volcaniclastic deposits, by using specific criteria related to clast morphology and sorting. Standard practice should be employed when analysing marine sediment cores to accurately identify both visible tephra and cryptotephra deposits, and to distinguish fallout deposits from other volcaniclastic deposits.

A tag-based personalized item recommendation system using tensor modeling and topic model approaches

This research falls in the area of enhancing the quality of tag-based item recommendation systems. It aims to achieve this by employing a multi-dimensional user profile approach and by analyzing the semantic aspects of tags. Tag-based recommender systems have two characteristics that need to be carefully studied in order to build a reliable system. Firstly, the multi-dimensional correlation, called as tag assignment , should be appropriately modelled in order to create the user profiles [1]. Secondly, the semantics behind the tags should be considered properly as the flexibility with their design can cause semantic problems such as synonymy and polysemy [2]. This research proposes to address these two challenges for building a tag-based item recommendation system by employing tensor modeling as the multi-dimensional user profile approach, and the topic model as the semantic analysis approach. The first objective is to optimize the tensor model reconstruction and to improve the model performance in generating quality rec-ommendation. A novel Tensor-based Recommendation using Probabilistic Ranking (TRPR) method [3] has been developed. Results show this method to be scalable for large datasets and outperforming the benchmarking methods in terms of accuracy. The memory efficient loop implements the n-mode block-striped (matrix) product for tensor reconstruction as an approximation of the initial tensor. The probabilistic ranking calculates the probabil-ity of users to select candidate items using their tag preference list based on the entries generated from the reconstructed tensor. The second objective is to analyse the tag semantics and utilize the outcome in building the tensor model. This research proposes to investigate the problem using topic model approach to keep the tags nature as the “social vocabulary” [4]. For the tag assignment data, topics can be generated from the occurrences of tags given for an item. However there is only limited amount of tags availa-ble to represent items as collection of topics, since an item might have only been tagged by using several tags. Consequently, the generated topics might not able to represent the items appropriately. Furthermore, given that each tag can belong to any topics with various probability scores, the occurrence of tags cannot simply be mapped by the topics to build the tensor model. A standard weighting technique will not appropriately calculate the value of tagging activity since it will define the context of an item using a tag instead of a topic.

Contextualising co-creation of value in electronic personal health records

This conceptual paper is a preliminary part of an ongoing study into take-up of electronic personal health records (ePHRs). The purpose of this work is to contextually ‘operationalise' Grönroos’ (2012) model of value co-creation in service for ePHRs. Using findings in the extant literature we enhance theoretical and practical understanding of the potential for co-creation of value with ePHRs for relevant stakeholders. The research design focused on the selection and evaluation of relevant literature to include in the discussion. The objective was to demonstrate which articles can be used to 'contextualise' the concepts in relation to relevant healthcare providers and patient engagement in the co-creation of value from having shared ePHRs. Starting at the service concept, that is, what the service provider wants to achieve and for whom, there is little doubt that there are recognised benefits that co-create value for both healthcare providers and healthcare consumers (i.e. patients) through shared ePHRs. We further highlight both alignments and misalignments in the resources and activities concepts between stakeholder groups. Examples include the types of functionalities as well as the interactive and peer communication needs perceived as useful for healthcare providers compared to healthcare consumers. The paper has implications for theory and practice and is an original and innovative approach to studying the co-creation of value in eHealth delivery.

A case study of utilising concept knowledge in a topic specific document collection

The use of ‘topic’ concepts has shown improved search performance, given a query, by bringing together relevant documents which use different terms to describe a higher level concept. In this paper, we propose a method for discovering and utilizing concepts in indexing and search for a domain specific document collection being utilized in industry. This approach differs from others in that we only collect focused concepts to build the concept space and that instead of turning a user’s query into a concept based query, we experiment with different techniques of combining the original query with a concept query. We apply the proposed approach to a real-world document collection and the results show that in this scenario the use of concept knowledge at index and search can improve the relevancy of results.

When sexuality is in a research topic! The methodological challenges in sexuality and street healing research in Bangladesh

This paper is a bridge between two studies by the author: (i) completed MA research; and (ii) on-going PhD research, on male sexual health and the street healing system in Bangladesh. Street healing, a traditional healing system in Bangladesh, is at the centre of the studies. This is a popular form of folk healing in Bangladesh, where male impotency is a central issue. The author has been researching street healing to understand male sexual health-seeking behaviour in Bangladesh. In this paper, the author brings in experiences from his MA research to explore the challenges of studying sexuality and street healing in Bangladesh and concludes by describing his plan to address those issues in his on-going PhD research.

Veracity of the archive : a research approach to the collection and verification of urban morphological records using qualitative data analysis software

Critical to the research of urban morphologists is the availability of historical records that document the urban transformation of the study area. However, thus far little work has been done towards an empirical approach to the validation of archival data in this field. Outlined in this paper, therefore, is a new methodology for validating the accuracy of archival records and mapping data, accrued through the process of urban morphological research, so as to establish a reliable platform from which analysis can proceed. The paper particularly addresses the problems of inaccuracies in existing curated historical information, as well as errors in archival research by student assistants, which together give rise to unacceptable levels of uncertainty in the documentation. The paper discusses the problems relating to the reliability of historical information, demonstrates the importance of data verification in urban morphological research, and proposes a rigorous method for objective testing of collected archival data through the use of qualitative data analysis software.

On the topic of competency and excellence of our graduate engineers

Problem solving is an essential element of civil engineering education. It has been I observed that students are best able to understand civil engineering theory when there is a ' practical application of it. Teaching theory alone has led to lower levels of comprehension and motivation and a correspondingly higher rate of failure and "drop-out". This paper analyses the effectiveness of introducing practical design projects at an early stage within a civil engineering undergraduate program at Queensland University of Technology. In two of the essential basic subjects, Engineering Mechanics and Steel Structures, model projects which simulate realistic engineering exercises were introduced. Students were required to work in small groups to analyse, design and build the lightest I most efficient model bridges made of specific materials such as spaghetti, drinking straw, paddle pop sticks and balsa wood and steel columns for a given design loading/target capacity. The paper traces the success of the teaching strategy at each stage from its introduction through to the final student and staff evaluation.

Sharing of clinical data in a maternity setting: How do paper hand-held records and electronic health records compare for completeness?

Background Historically, the paper hand-held record (PHR) has been used for sharing information between hospital clinicians, general practitioners and pregnant women in a maternity shared-care environment. Recently in alignment with a National e-health agenda, an electronic health record (EHR) was introduced at an Australian tertiary maternity service to replace the PHR for collection and transfer of data. The aim of this study was to examine and compare the completeness of clinical data collected in a PHR and an EHR. Methods We undertook a comparative cohort design study to determine differences in completeness between data collected from maternity records in two phases. Phase 1 data were collected from the PHR and Phase 2 data from the EHR. Records were compared for completeness of best practice variables collected The primary outcome was the presence of best practice variables and the secondary outcomes were the differences in individual variables between the records. Results Ninety-four percent of paper medical charts were available in Phase 1 and 100% of records from an obstetric database in Phase 2. No PHR or EHR had a complete dataset of best practice variables. The variables with significant improvement in completeness of data documented in the EHR, compared with the PHR, were urine culture, glucose tolerance test, nuchal screening, morphology scans, folic acid advice, tobacco smoking, illicit drug assessment and domestic violence assessment (p = 0.001). Additionally the documentation of immunisations (pertussis, hepatitis B, varicella, fluvax) were markedly improved in the EHR (p = 0.001). The variables of blood pressure, proteinuria, blood group, antibody, rubella and syphilis status, showed no significant differences in completeness of recording. Conclusion This is the first paper to report on the comparison of clinical data collected on a PHR and EHR in a maternity shared-care setting. The use of an EHR demonstrated significant improvements to the collection of best practice variables. Additionally, the data in an EHR were more available to relevant clinical staff with the appropriate log-in and more easily retrieved than from the PHR. This study contributes to an under-researched area of determining data quality collected in patient records.

Pattern-based topic modelling and its application for information filtering and information retrieval

This thesis targets on a challenging issue that is to enhance users' experience over massive and overloaded web information. The novel pattern-based topic model proposed in this thesis can generate high-quality multi-topic user interest models technically by incorporating statistical topic modelling and pattern mining. We have successfully applied the pattern-based topic model to both fields of information filtering and information retrieval. The success of the proposed model in finding the most relevant information to users mainly comes from its precisely semantic representations to represent documents and also accurate classification of the topics at both document level and collection level.

ACE Research Vignette 045: Are “Entrepreneurial Opportunities” a meaningful topic for entrepreneurship research?

This series of research vignettes is aimed at sharing current and interesting research findings from our team of international entrepreneurship researchers. In this vignette, Professor Per Davidsson discusses research on “entrepreneurial opportunities”. A “Government Health Warning” is in place for this particular vignette: it mainly concerns matters internal to entrepreneurship research; however, reflective practitioners may find it to be of interest.

Paper and electronic antenatal records: What do women and health care providers tell us about their use?

The antenatal paper hand-held record (PHR) has been used extensively in general practice (GP) shared-care management of pregnant women, but recently the antenatal electronic health record (EHR) was introduced. This study aimed to examine the experiences of women and health care providers who use the PHR and the EHR, and find out the relative role of these records in the integration of care. Purposive homogenous samples of women and health care providers were interviewed as users of the PHR in phase 1 and the EHR in phase 2 of the study. Qualitative data were collected via interview with women and GPs and focus groups held with hospital health care providers. Interviews were coded manually and analysed using qualitative content analysis. Fifteen women participated in phase 1 and 12 in phase 2. Seventeen GPs participated in phase 1 and 15 in phase 2. Five focus groups with hospital health care providers were conducted in each phase. Results were categorised into four themes: 1. Record purpose; 2. Perception of the record; 3. Content of the record, and; 4. Sharing information in the record. Both women and health care providers were familiar with the PHR, but identified that some information was missing or not utilised well, and reported underuse of the EHR. The study identified continued widespread use of the PHR and several issues concerning the use of the EHR. An improvement in the strategic implementation of the EHR is suggested as a mechanism to facilitate its wider adoption.